me very hard," she went on, "and I am afraid I made some
admissions--well, there were necessary--which, to say the least of it,
were compromising. There was only one way out of it decently for me, and
I took it. You don't mind?"

"Of course not," he replied.

"There was father to be considered," she went on. "He was furious at
first--"

"You told your father?" he interrupted.

"I had to," she explained, smoothing her muff. "He was there all the
time that Thomson man was cross-examining me."

"Then your father believes in our engagement, too?"

"He does," she answered drily, "or I am afraid you would have heard a
little more from Major Thomson before now. Ever since that night, father
has been quite impossible to live with. He says he has to being a part
of his work all over again."

"The bombs really did do some damage, then?" he asked.

She nodded, looking at him for a moment curiously.

"Yes," she acknowledged, "they did more harm than any one knows. The
place is like a fortress now. They say that if they can find the other
man who helped to light that flare, he will be shot in five minutes."

Granet, who had been standing with his elbow upon the mantelpiece,
leaned over and took a cigarette from a box.

"Then, for his sake, let us hope that they do not find him," he
remarked.

"And ours," she said softly.

Granet stood and looked at her steadfastly, the match burning in his
fingers. Then he threw it away and lit another. The interval had been
full of unadmitted tension, which suddenly passed.

"Shall you think I am horribly greedy," she asked, "if I say that I
should like something to eat? I am dying of hunger."

Granet for a moment was startled. Then he moved towards the bell.

"How absurd of me!" he exclaimed. "Of course, you have just come up,
haven't you?"

"I have come straight from the station here," she replied.

He paused.

"Where are you staying, then?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know yet," she admitted.

"You don't know?" he repeated.

She met his gaze without flinching. There was a little spot of colour in
her cheeks, however, and her lips quivered.

"You see," she explained, "things became absolutely impossible for me at
Market Burnham. I won't say that they disbelieved me--not my father, at
any rate--but he seems to think that it was somehow my fault--that if
you hadn't been there that night the thing wouldn't have happened. I am
watched the whole of the time, in fact